Chapter 4: Two Phone Numbers
I stared at that second number for the rest of the evening.
It wasn't on the printed side of the card.
It had been written by hand, in blue ink, small and deliberate.
Someone had added it after the card was printed.
Richard had added it.
He had given me a card with a private number on the back and said nothing about it.
That wasn't an accident.
I called Donna back.
"There's a second number," I said.
"Handwritten.
On the back."
A pause.
"He put it there on purpose."
"That's what I think."
"So he wants you to call it," she said.
"He just didn't want to say so in front of Tyler."
I turned the card over again.
The printed side.
The professional side.
Managing Director.
"Or," Donna said slowly, "he wants to know if you will."
I didn't call it that night.
I put the card in the kitchen drawer and told myself I would think about it clearly in the morning.
I didn't sleep well.
By seven the next morning I was at the kitchen table with coffee I hadn't touched and the card in front of me again.
I turned it over to the handwritten side.
I dialed.
It rang twice.
"I wondered how long you'd wait," Richard said.
No greeting.
No surprise.
He had been expecting my call.
"You left me a number," I said.
"You didn't mention it."
"I didn't want to explain it in front of Tyler."
"Then explain it now."
A brief silence.
Then: "Can you meet me?
Not at the house.
Somewhere neutral."
"Why?"
"Because what I need to tell you is not a short conversation," he said.
"And you deserve to hear it properly."
I looked at my untouched coffee.
"There's a diner on Clement Street," I said.
"I'll be there at nine."
He was already seated when I arrived.
Coffee in front of him.
No jacket this time, just a plain gray shirt.
He looked less like a Managing Director and more like a man who hadn't slept either.
I sat down across from him.
"Start talking," I said.
Richard wrapped both hands around his mug.
"Tyler reminds me of someone."
"Who?"
He looked up.
"My son."
I hadn't expected that.
I kept my face still and waited.
"His name was Daniel," Richard said.
"He was twenty-three.
He worked for me for eighteen months.
Talented the same way Tyler is — not loud about it, just quietly capable.
The kind of person who makes everyone around him better without realizing it."
"Was," I said.
Richard nodded.
"He d*ed fourteen months ago.
Workplace accident at a site I approved.
A safety check I signed off on." He set the mug down.
"I signed off on it, and my son d*ed because of it."
The diner was quiet around us.
Someone behind the counter dropped a spoon.
"I'm sorry," I said.
And I meant it.
But I also didn't move.
"I'm not telling you this for sympathy," Richard said.
"I'm telling you because you need to understand why I've been doing what I've been doing.
And why the condition I gave you last night was real."
"Tyler can never know you spoke to me first."
"That's right."
"Why?"
Richard looked at me steadily.
"Because the offer I'm making Tyler isn't just a job.
And if he thinks it came through his mother, he'll refuse it.
He'll think it's charity.
He'll think I feel sorry for him." He paused.
"And he'll be wrong."
I studied his face.
The grief in it was real.
I had raised a child alone for sixteen years.
I knew what real grief looked like when it sat in someone's eyes.
But grief didn't explain everything.
"What do you mean the offer isn't just a job?" I said.
May you like
Richard reached into his shirt pocket and placed a folded document on the table between us.
"Open it," he said.
